Ethan:

  The kiss had barely faded from her lips when the call came.

  Vincent doesn’t "check in." He doesn’t ask for small talk or apologies. He just speaks, and the world rearranges itself around his words.

  The screen of Celeste’s phone lit up with one name:

  Father.

  She answered with a sigh like she'd been waiting for him.

  No greeting. Just his voice.

  “Are you free tonight?”

  Celeste looked at me, half-smile curling slow and dark.

  “Depends,” she said. “Are we killing someone or stealing something?”

  A pause.

  Then:

  “Both. If done right.”

  Celeste:

  We were briefed in the study. Quiet. Low-lit. Vincent behind the desk like a cathedral gargoyle in a thousand-dollar suit. The only light came from a single lamp and the laptop glowing between us, open to a grainy security feed.

  A bank.

  But not just any bank.

  St. Savien’s Vault. Hidden beneath a cathedral. Private. Off-grid. Neutral ground for the world’s worst people.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The kind of place that didn’t store money — it stored secrets.

  And at the heart of it?

  A USB drive.

  Unmarked.

  Encrypted.

  Allegedly tied to an abandoned government project — a prototype designed to access and override national surveillance systems. Police databases. Facial recognition networks. Satellite live feeds.

  Blackmail in a box.

  And now it was in the wrong hands.

  Vincent tapped the screen.

  “A man named Renwick controls the vault. He’s dying. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.”

  Ethan: “You want us to kill him?”

  Vincent: “I want you to take his access. If he dies before you get in, it locks forever. If you fail—”

  Celeste: “We don’t.”

  Vincent didn’t smile. But his eyes gleamed.

  “My daughter. And my son-in-law. The most dangerous people I know.”

  He slid a thin dossier across the table.

  Blueprints. Passcodes. Retinal scan data. And an itinerary.

  “You have forty-eight hours.”

  Ethan:

  Later, in our private quarters, Celeste spread the documents across the bed like tarot cards. She was in her silk robe again, but this time there was a Glock beside the hairbrush on the nightstand.

  “Surveillance override?” I muttered, scanning the specs. “Facial recognition access. Real-time GPS on anyone?”

  She smirked.

  “You’re thinking about how to use it.”

  “No,” I said, folding a blueprint. “I’m thinking about who shouldn’t have it.”

  Her eyes met mine. Electric. Calculating. She crawled across the sheets and straddled me, the USB’s profile printout crinkling beneath her knee.

  “Stealing it is one thing,” she whispered. “Keeping it is where the fun begins.”

  Celeste:

  I kissed him slow, then stood, wrapping my robe tighter and pulling a blade from beneath the mattress.

  We didn’t sleep.

  We prepared.

  We were going to break into a bank beneath a church run by criminals, guarded by mercenaries, to steal a single flash drive that could unmake governments.

  A Thursday night, really.

  By morning, our disguises were ordered. IDs scrubbed. Contact in Prague (the other one) activated.

  And Ethan?

  He watched the footage of Renwick’s routines on loop — his walk, his hand gestures, his every unconscious tell — like a man writing poetry from patterns.

  He looked at me after an hour and said:

  “I can make him give us the key. He just doesn’t know he wants to yet.”